This man died more than 700 years ago—so why does he look like he got hit by a car?

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals our editors can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. FACT: Death by trebuchet looks a lot like a car accident By Rachel Feltman In 1997, archaeologists found nine medieval skeletons beneath the ground of a chapel within Stirling Castle. That odd resting place (namely, indoors) piqued their interest. And radiocarbon dating placed them around the year 1300, which provided a potential explanation for their indoor burial: a siege that kept people from going outside. Edward I’s 1304 siege of Stirling just so happened to be one of the most brutal instances of such warfare in the land’s history. Most of the skeletons found in Stirling’s chapel had the sorts of wounds archaeologists expected to find on siege victims, like sword cuts, blunt trauma, and the wear and tear of hand-to-hand combat. One of them was…different. “Skeleton 150” was a veritable jigsaw puzzle of a man, with more than 160 fractures to be found on his 5’5” frame. His skull was shattered into 61 pieces, his upper leg was basically shredded, and he had dozens of odd zigzagging fractures along his ribs—along with a similarly jagged break on his shoulder. Image: Getty Images Scientists recently set about to rule out some possible explanations for Skeleton 150’s condition. They used advanced imaging techniques and forensic analysis to show that the breaks happened on fresh bone, as opposed to representing some chaotic posthumous scenario. They compared the fracture patterns to falls from great heights, horse tramplings, and other plausible culprits, all to no avail. What the skeleton’s injuries actually resembled, somewhat unsettlingly, was a collision with a fast-moving train or car. There were, of course, no bullet trains or automobiles present at the siege of Stirling. But don’t blame aliens just yet. Consider the trebuchet. These siege engines weren’t designed to kill people, per say, or at least not designed to hit people. Their strength was in walloping a structure and making parts of it collapse, thereby weakening the defenses of the castle under siege. But if someone was inadvertently hit by the massive, fast-moving projectile payload of a trebuchet, researchers now suggest, it could certainly look a lot like they’d been hit by a car. The War Wolf—a contender for the largest trebuchet ever built—was designed for and presented at the siege of Stirling. In fact, it’s said that Stirling’s governor tried to surrender when he saw the weapon. Edward I refused, opting to demonstrate the power of the massive siege engine first. When its projectile punched through the castle’s curtain wall, observers compared the sight to an arrow ripping through cloth. Skeleton 150 almost certainly wasn’t killed by the War Wolf itself, given that Edward I took the time to set up a viewing area for ladies of the court to watch its one and only attack. We know that several less superlatively large trebuchets and catapults bombarded the castle for months before the War Wolf hit the scene, so statistically it’s much more likely that one of these smaller engines took the poor guy out. Plus, the skeleton’s burial inside the castle suggests the siege continued for some time after his death—and once the War Wolf did its thing, the siege was over. The study behind this story hasn’t actually been peer-reviewed yet—it was presented at a conference earlier this year. But if the research stands up to scrutiny from other experts, skeleton 150 could represent the first direct victim of a trebuchet ever discovered. FACT: Think you love coffee? You’ve got nothing on Balzac. Featuring Shane Madej This week’s episode features the hosts of The Quizard’s Pit, a show we think Weirdest Thing fans are going to love. The Quizard's Pit | Podcast Trailer For his fact, co-host Shane told us about the absolutely blistering coffee habits of author Honore de Balzac. His prolific output was powered by fourteen-to-eighteen hour stretches of writing, all of which were powered by cups of strong black coffee. Some folks like to say he chugged up to 50 cups a day, though attempts to confirm this figure with a primary source have failed. (And as this delightfully illustrated investigative essay points out, he would have spent a large portion of his day simply peeing if he drank more than two gallons of coffee.) But the low estimates hover around 20 cups, which, even assuming a relatively low caffeine content per cup and allowing for the possibility of tiny little serving vessels, would have put Balzac well over the recommended daily caffeine intake for an adult. And however many cups he drank, it was probably more like espresso or Turkish coffee (AKA: strong). But the question of how many cups of coffee Balzac consumed is kind of beside the point. Because according to Balzac himself, he eventually graduated from drinking coffee to eating it: he pretty much literally dry-scooped raw grounds and ate them on an empty stomach. (There may have been some minimal water involved as lubricant, but the point is that he was mainlining those grounds instead of drinking an infused brew.) His essay “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee” is a florid, dare we say unhinged piece of writing that waxes poetic on the sensation of housing raw beans. While we can’t be certain that this gnarly habit actually contributed to his death at the age of 51, we’re pretty confident that it didn’t help. FACT: Big Bird almost went to space Featuring Matt Real Our other Quizard’s Pit guest shared the story of Big Bird’s failed trip to space (and thank goodness for that). In the mid 80s, NASA launched the Space Flight Participant Program in the hopes that sending extra-ordinary civilians on shuttle missions could reinvigorate the public’s excitement for spaceflight. They wanted to find teachers, journalists, artists and other figures who could provide a unique perspective on shuttle life and share their experiences with the whole country. Journalist frontrunners for the program included Walter Cronkite and Miles O’Brien, and writer James Michener was considered as well. They also seriously considered sending Big Bird. Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who’d been operating Big Bird since 1969, reportedly got a letter from NASA asking if he’d go into orbit in costume. If you know anything about the logistical hurdles of space travel, you can probably guess why this never came to pass: Big Bird is a big bird.The costume weighs around 20 pounds and stretches more than eight feet tall. Apparently folks at the Sesame Workshop pitched having Big Bird send his teddy bear into space to comfort a homesick astronaut instead, but NASA wasn’t interested. That’s where this story takes a tragic turn. NASA focused instead on its Teacher in Space program, with social studies teacher and mother-of-two Christa McAuliffe chosen as the program’s first payload specialist. She and the rest of the crew of the Challenger mission died when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986. 2026 Popular Science Home of the Future Awards 39 products that will improve your everyday life.